


The gate is straight deep and wide

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [31]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:08:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26103970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: There are only so many things Sonny can think of to help Vinnie.
Series: The Roadhouse Blues [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713





	The gate is straight deep and wide

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been—I dunno. It's been a lot of time since my last confession—"

Sonny wandered away from the confessional. He didn't want to hear Vinnie's confession, and he especially didn't want to hear Vinnie crying anymore.

Not that it mattered. When they were done here, Vinnie would start with his sins against Sonny, the things he felt guilty for from their time in AC. And there was nothing Sonny could do to stop him.

The church was more of a cathedral. Not, in Sonny's opinion, as swanky as St. Pat's—though Sonny had never been inside St. Pat's—but pretty impressive nonetheless. He could feel the disapproving looks of the good Catholics waiting to go to confession, but they didn't bother him. It wouldn't be church if there wasn't somebody disapproving of him, even if it was only God. Sonny walked around, looking at the statues; then he went over to the prayer candles, made the sign of the cross, lit one, and stuck a hundred dollar bill in the box. There were more candles on the other side of the church, so he went over and did the same thing there, and again at the candles up near the altar. He'd given up praying a long time ago, but maybe God would help Vinnie anyway.

Then he went and sat back down to wait.

"—now and at the hour of our death, amen. Hail Mary—" The woman across the aisle from him was saying a rosary under her breath. Sonny closed his eyes and listened to the familiar cadence of the prayers. He could remember his grandmother saying her rosary, though she'd done her praying in Italian. What had she been praying for? Compared to the life she'd had in Sicily, life on Arthur Avenue **was** heaven. Maybe she'd been praying for the souls of dead relatives. Hell, maybe she'd been praying for him.

Vinnie was still in the box. Sonny could hear his voice, torn by sobbing he couldn't seem to stop, but he couldn't understand the words. Not that he was trying. But he'd be surprised if the priest could understand them, either. Sonny had no idea what had set him off this time; he'd been doing it when Sonny woke up and found him, sitting in a corner of the room as though someone had thrown him there, hands over his face. He'd already hit incoherence and was edging up on hysteria. _God, this's worse than him sleeping all this time._

The first time Vinnie had started crying, they were on the interstate. Sonny was driving. He couldn't remember from where or to where; it was back when it didn't matter. He'd thought Vinnie was asleep, and maybe he had been, maybe he'd just woke up crying. Sonny heard his breathing hitching and had glanced over to see Vinnie's hands covering his face.

He'd listened to it for as long as he could stand it, then finally he'd asked if Vinnie wanted him to pull over.

"No," Vinnie said. "No, don't pull over."

So he'd driven a while longer, 'til he'd seen a sign for a rest stop.

"You don't need to—" Vinnie had tried to tell him as Sonny started to pull in.

"It's not always about you, you know," Sonny said as gently as he could, and got out of the car and went and paced around the men's room. He counted to one hundred, then backwards back down to one. He bought a cup of coffee out of the machine, drank it, then bought a couple more, and a package of donuts for Vinnie, belatedly thinking of one other thing Vinnie needed, and went back in the men's room to take a roll of toilet paper.

That had been the first time. The other times all kind of ran together. Usually Sonny couldn’t see them coming; it seemed as though Vinnie would just suddenly snap under pressures he couldn't see. Sometimes he knew what started them, because sometimes Vinnie told him; sometimes Vinnie acted as though he wasn't there at all.

It was always the same, though; it was all about what a disappointment he was, and what a coward he was, and that he wished McPike believed he was dead, that he was glad his mother did, though he didn't sound especially glad about anything.

What a mess he was.

Sonny had tried to talk to him this morning, but it hadn't done any good. Vinnie was going on about Frank again, the same self-reproach, the same contrition.

 _Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for my sins . . . ._ Sonny couldn't remember the rest.

He finally got out of Vinnie that he wanted to go to confession. That seemed harmless, so Sonny got dressed, got him dressed, and took him to the nearest Catholic church.

It was closed. Vinnie said something about God not wanting him, but he wasn't crying anyway. "I'm just middle management," he explained to Sonny, who had no idea what he talking about and didn't answer him.

"Can you wait here?" Sonny asked.

Vinnie looked around the car. "It's your car," he said finally.

Sonny had to resist the urge to dope-smack him. "If I leave you here for ten minutes, will you still be here when I get back?"

Vinnie was looking at him, sort of; his eyes were so swollen, he probably couldn't see very well. "Yeah," he said, as though answering a trick question. "Sure. Where would I go?"

"Nowhere! Just wait here." Sonny went to a stationery store across the street and borrowed the phone book. He copied down the numbers of half a dozen churches in the area, then went outside to a pay phone. He started calling them, watching Vinnie—who didn't seem to be doing anything more than sitting—until he found one that was open for confessions at nine o'clock on a Thursday morning. It was only eight-fifteen, but nine was the best he could do. Thursday didn't seem to be a very big day for confessions. Probably people were too tired from working to do much sinning on Wednesday night, or maybe they were saving up their confessing for when they went to Mass on Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

There was no place to go, so Sonny just drove around for forty-five minutes. Vinnie, sitting with his head resting against the window, hadn't seemed to notice.

The woman who was now sitting across from him, saying her rosary, had been there waiting for the church to open, but when the doors were unlocked and the priest was ensconced in the confessional, Sonny ignored her and pushed Vinnie into the box ahead of her. He didn't care if she'd murdered her children at breakfast, Vinnie needed this more than she did.

"You don't understand!" Vinnie's voice came loud out of the confessional, startling Sonny, but not surprising him. He started to go over, but Vinnie's voice dropped back down to an appropriate murmur.

Sonny got out a cigarette, and found his lighter, then remembered he couldn't smoke there, and put them away. He wondered what the priest thought about Vinnie, looking like he was homeless, coming into his confessional and raving about some guy named Frank. They were in San Francisco, but this was still the Catholic church, and Rome hadn't changed its stance that as far as Sonny had heard. But the priest hadn't yelled at him, or thrown him out, or told him God didn't want him.

It didn't make any sense, God didn't want him. Why wouldn't God want him? Vinnie spent most of his time trying to fix things for people, usually people he didn't even know. Who **did** God want, if not Vinnie? What Sonny couldn't figure out was what **he** was supposed to be doing, who the hell Vinnie thought **he** was, because Sonny didn't know how to do this.

Sonny rubbed his eyes. He was getting a headache. "It isn't God who has to forgive me!" Vinnie had gotten loud again. He was sounding more angry than hysterical; that was good, anyway. "I need God to help me, to help Frank—" Sonny got up and hurried to the confessional, pushed back the curtain to get to Vinnie.

The priest was saying something soothing, but he sounded a little spooked. _Why not? Vinnie's pretty spooky when he's off the deep end._

"Hey! You gotta calm down," Sonny said, not bothering to lower his voice. 

Vinnie had stopped crying, anyway. He was kneeling there, leaning his head against the wall of the confessional, breathing hard. "You can't get forgived—forgiven for a sin you're still committing," Vinnie said to the priest.

Sonny crouched next to him, touching him awkwardly. "C'm'on, baby, you gotta calm down."

The priest had come out of his side of the box and was looking at Sonny for some kind of explanation. Sonny shook his head; he didn't have one. He stood up. "Can you get up?" he asked Vinnie.

"Yeah. Sure." Sonny helped as Vinnie awkwardly got to his feet. "Were you done?” he asked Vinnie, who was staring at his shoes. Sonny looked at the priest. "Were you done?" he asked, and when the priest started to say something about Vinnie needing more help than he could give, Sonny cut him off. "Did you give him—" he couldn't think of the word. "Did you forgive him?"

"You can't receive absolution for a sin you're still committing," Vinnie muttered. "I just said that!"

"Absolution, yeah, that's what he needs." The priest was just staring at him. "What? What do you think he could'a done that he deserves **this**? Do I have to take him someplace else?" Sonny realized he was getting a little loud himself, but it worked; the priest went through his spiel.

"—I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." He made the sign of the cross over Vinnie.

"Thanks a lot, Father," Sonny said. He took a handful of bills out of his pocket and pressed them into the priest's hand. "I'll take him home now." He tugged on Vinnie's sleeve. "C'm'on."

Vinnie walked with him, still staring down at his shoes. He wasn't crying, anyway. That was something, right? It was **something**.

Well, what had he been expecting anyway, a miracle?


End file.
